


Try Falling

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, First Kiss, Inspired by The Greatest Showman (2017), Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-15 18:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15419214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Zaven, Song Fic AU. At first, their magnetic attraction seems like fate. Then the world seems to be against them, pulling them apart, and maybe the stars just aren’t worth the fight. Based off Rewrite the Stars from The Greatest Showman.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this was kind of hard to write because obviously the struggle with Phillip and Anne is that society doesn’t approve of a biracial relationship, and neither Raven nor Zeke are white. So I tried to spin it as a classism thing, because I didn’t want to rip that part of their characterization away and I hope you still like it!

Raven pushes back tears as she changes out of the gown she’d put on so excitedly, not even an hour ago. 

She leaves the satin on the floor, not caring when the dust settles with the rich colors. It’s about right. She’s not a girl for new dresses, and it was foolish to think that she was. 

The linen of her shirt and shorts feels familiar. They’re coarse and they’re loose and they’re fitting of a worker, of someone with callouses on their hands. Someone who performs in a show, not someone who pays to see it. 

She closes her eyes for a moment, pushing back the memory of the opera house. She needs a rope between her hands and wind through her hair to wipe it away. 

Her step hesitates when she gets to the edge of the main arena; Zeke is leaning up against one of the supports by the door. When he sees her, he pushes away from it. 

He’s still in his tux. 

For a moment they stand in silence. The night is still and so are they, regarding each other, hearts tired. 

Ever so slightly, Raven shakes her head and moves past him. 

“Raven,” he says her name, falteringly, and she hesitates, turning to look at him. His hand is extended, like he meant to grab for her arm when she passed him, but wasn’t sure how he’d be received. His fingers curl, and he drops his arm. “They’re small minded people. You shouldn’t care what they say.”

And she turns at that, actually turns, because she’s amazed that he really thinks that that’s what this is about. That the opinion of two people could be enough to wound her, after a life or letting people’s disapproval settle on her shoulders. She doesn’t mean to laugh, but it bursts out of her and she shakes her head. “Zeke, it’s not just them.”

His brow furrows and before he can answer, Raven steps around his hand, pushing back the curtain to get into the main arena. 

It’s quiet inside. The sawdust muffles the fall of her step and the air is thick with the smell of candy apples, and popcorn, and sweat. 

Raven walks over to the side of the arena where her rope is tethered, pulls it from its hook, testing the weight of it in her hands. Another coarse part of her life, another callous she’s built to protect herself. 

She untangles more of it, circling it at her feet, measuring the length. 

“You know I want you.”

Zeke’s voice seems to echo around the arena, usually vibrating with children’s laughter and the stampede of animals, but awed into silence at his words. Raven’s fingers still at the sound, but she shakes her head, shakes herself. 

Just because he doesn’t give up doesn’t mean she has the luxury of doing the same. 

“It’s not like I’ve made a secret out of it or anything,” Zeke says, and his voice is closer now. She knows if she looks over her shoulder she’ll see him, far enough away to respect her space, but expression earnest, pleading. She grips the rope tighter, feels the sting of it as it whips through her palms, grounding her. 

“What’s more,” he says carefully, and she can almost feel him now, behind her, closer. Watching her, then the rope, then her again. “I know you want me.”

Her heart lurches, because of course she does. 

Though she knows it’s stupid and impossible, of course she wants him. 

Which is why it hurts like crazy that she can’t have him. 

She lets out a short breath and yanks on the rope, scooping to pick up the coils she laid on the ground and stepping away from the post. Away from Zeke. 

Silence isn’t her usual solution, but she doesn’t trust herself to speak just yet. 

She crosses the arena, fingers flying as she wraps the rope around another pillar. She knows the knots, knows their strength, and she wishes for a moment that she could untangle her life with the same ease. 

With a final pull, she’s set; Raven turns from the pillar and into Zeke. 

In front of her, eyes pleading, needing to understand. Hands clenched at his sides to keep from reaching for her, shoulders tight with ill-concealed tenseness. And she knows better, but she wants to reach out to him. Soothe the crease in his forehead with her fingertips, brush away the tension in his shoulders. Take away that look from his eyes. 

“It’s not that simple,” she says, finally, voice softer than she wants for it to be. 

“Explain it, then,” he says, earnestly, and Raven shakes her head. 

“Because this,” she lifts her arms, looking around the arena, “isn’t the same as out there. Just because we can be just you and just me in here, that all fades once we step outside.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“It does,” Raven says, pursing her lips. “And if you don’t see it, everyone else does: out of this arena, there’s no us.”

Her words land heavily, like when they drop the beams and unfurl the heavy canvas of the tents the first day at a new location.

She pushes by him, into the ring of light at the center of the arena. 

The end of the rope she holds in her hands goes straight up, to the point of the circus, and she walks lightly with it, testing it, leaning into it. The rigging at the top of the tent and the knots she’s tied around the pillars are a part of her routine, familiar, and she circles slowly. After a lap or so, she rolls her neck and loops the rope around her wrist. Every couple of steps, she lifts her legs, a quick jump, a quick flight. Weightless for a moment. 

It was what she loves about the trapeze —the  st olen moments where she hangs from her fingers and her leg doesn’t feel like a hindrance. 

Raven circles her wrists again around the rope, leaps longer. Lets her body angle, an extension of the rope’s arc, hovering. Suspended, for a moment, waiting. 

It’s a part of her warm up, a routine she’s done a thousand times. It feels different under Zeke’s eyes though. Usually the stillness of the empty arena calms her, but today it's just a contrast to the raging emotions inside of her, emphasized by his presence. 

When she lands the next time, steady on her good leg, and reworks the wrapping around her hand, she sees Zeke step into the ring, and her heart beats a little faster at the look on his face. He’s watched her and Wells perform enough to know the steps that they do together, the groundwork before they fly together. 

And she’s trained with Wells her whole life, knows every leap and choreographed step before he begins, but she has no explanation for why she trusts Zeke as much as she does her partner. 

They’re not quite dancing, not quite climbing, but Raven is weaving in and out of him. Under his arm, behind him, hair whipping and pretending not to notice when his hand lingers on her waist. 

Funny how she feels more confident here, in linen and dust, than in the prettiest gown and in the grandest of halls. 

Raven twirls on her rope, and she sees Zeke’s eyes dancing as he follows her. She loses herself in the pull of the dance, in the theatricality of it, in the charade, spinning and leaping, ducking and weaving. She dips out to the end of her rope but then Zeke steps over, not in the routine, above him, and pulls. The change of the angle yanks her towards him, and Raven tells herself that that’s why her hands fly to his shoulders, to steady herself. 

There’s no excuse for Zeke’s hand on her face, gentle, cupping her cheek and brushing her hair away from her eyes. 

They’re both breathing hard, faces flushed and eyes bright, and Raven leans into his touch, her eyes closing, giving herself this moment. 

“Raven,” he breathes, and when she opens her eyes, oh how she wishes it was this easy everywhere. Because he’s looking at her like she’s the best thing he can imagine, like she’s everything, and like he’d do anything to convince her of it. He blinks, slowly, then his hand drops to hers on his shoulder, his fingers tightening on hers. He brings her hand to over his chest, and she can feel the warmth of him through his dress shirt. 

“You’re here,” he says simply, and she realizes that he’s placed her hand over his heart. “And that doesn’t change whether we’re standing in sawdust or the town square.”

Her fingers tighten on his shirt, fisting the material. She should push away, push him away, but that would mean that she’d have to stop listening to the words pouring out of him, and she doesn’t think she’s strong enough for that. 

Raven licks her lips, makes herself give voice to the reason coursing through her. “I...” she begins, and she clenches her eyes shut to focus. “I was never much for horoscopes. Or astrology, or any of that. But, Zeke, you have to see that some things are the way they are, and that we can’t change them.”

He doesn’t say anything. 

Raven opens her eyes slowly, hesitantly, and she wishes she hasn’t, because the emotion on Zeke’s face is just too much. Where he was awestruck before he looks broken now, and it curls in her stomach that she put that there, she did that. She took the lightness from his eyes away from him, replaced it with hurt. 

She has to, though, if she’s going to protect him from a life of people looking at him the way they always look at her. 

“Who’s going to stop me?” he says, his voice deep with intensity.

“What?” Raven asks weakly, confused, wary. 

“If I decide that you are what I want for my life, that you’re who I want to be with, who can stop me?”

She can see that he means it, see defiance strong in his eyes. And it softens something inside of her, because he would fight for her. 

But he’d grow tired. 

She’s grown tired, and she doesn’t have a choice, and she can’t ask that of him. “Zeke — ”

“We’ll rewrite them,” he says, firmly, and Raven blinks. 

“What?”

“Those stars that you don’t believe in. You’re the one I was meant to find, Raven, and fate, destiny, stars, whatever, they don’t get to decide that. That’s up to you and me.”

His hand is still on her cheek, his thumb brushing over her face, and Raven wants to believe it. That maybe together, they can be stronger than the world that wants nothing more than to pull them apart. 

But then she thinks of the thin line that his mother’s lips drew into when she saw her precious son with Raven. The way his father refused to look at her, addressed only his son, not the help. The way the opera crawled with whispers, and the eyes that averted as soon as they were caught staring. 

Zeke is still in front of her, eyes tracing over her face, memorizing her. His face, so close to her, so open...too kind. Raven reaches behind her, feeling for the rope she’d dropped when he’d pulled her to him. 

She yanks hard on the rope and sawdust showers down, stale and hesitant. At the other end of the line, a sandbag tumbles from its perch and plummets down to the floor of the arena; Raven lifts her fingers from his chest just before the rope is pulled tight, lifting her to the ceiling, out of his reach. 

She catches herself on the platform, tying the rope on its hook there, and reaching over for the hoop. It’s an easier descent in its cradle, but her hip always protests from the weight of her dead leg. Raven would rather fly from her arm then lower herself by the hoop, but there’s only so many tricks she can do without being redundant, so she practices with it. 

All of this she thinks through, methodically, trying to block out the look on Zeke’s face when she pulled herself away from him. 

She peaks over the edge of the platform, and he’s where she left him, circling, trying to see through the bright lights and distance. Trying to see her. 

Raven steps through the hoop, tying the knots in the top of it that she needs, and lowers herself down by it. From up here, she can’t see the blazing of his eyes, or the warmth of his hand. Maybe from up here, she can say what she needs to. 

She sees the moment when he picks her out of the shadows, when the rope has lowered the hoop and she’s dangling above him in the arena. And she’s struck wordless when she sees relief flash over his face, then admiration. 

Zeke watches her descent, slow, graceful. Toes pointed, even the ones she can’t feel, graceful and elongated, like the dancer her leg has ensured she’ll never be. 

She touches the ground, and Zeke still hadn’t moved when she dismounts. He’s just watching, awestruck, and a part of her revels in that. 

What girl doesn’t dream of having someone looking at her the way he is?

Raven cocks her head to the side and Zeke comes over eagerly. He knows this routine too; his hands are strong as he lifts her through and over the hoop. She trusts his steadiness, his quickness, and the maneuvers that should take years to perfect seem to come natural to him. 

She’s upside-down in the hoop, her knees locked over the top of it, in an angle that always clouds her mind with pain that she hides behind a performer’s smile. But in this moment, it’s in the back of her head, because Zeke is still standing, just in front of her. Their breath mixing, their hearts beating, and the suddenness of it makes her pause.

She forces the words out

“When everyone,” she says, her voice breathless, “tells us what we can be, it’s not up to you. Or to me. We can’t rewrite anything.”

“We can,” he whispers, and his eyes are urgent.

And then she escapes, as she did earlier. 

A flick of her wrist and the hoop begins its ascent; Zeke’s face falls out of view and Raven lets out a slow breath, but then the hoop sways. Raven looks down and Zeke has grabbed onto the bottom rim, and he’s being carried up with her. 

He’s looking up at her, so she sees the exact moment when resignation falls over his face. He has to let go. 

His fingers unfurl and he drops heavily to the sawdust, a cloud billowing around his feet, and the hoop rockets upwards with its lightened load. 

Raven dismounts it unsteadily, hooking it into its place and balancing on the railings at the top of the arena. 

In a perfect world, she’d run to him. Drop herself down the rope, unravel her guard and the walls of protection that she’s built as she climbs down the arena. Trust her arms to carry her down and his to catch her. 

But there’s nothing perfect about the world that she lives in. 

Raven unhooks a rope on from the side of the tent, wraps it around her arm. Leaps, needing the adrenaline and the air and anything to be louder than the ache of her heart. 

Wind roars in her ears as the rope slings her across the arena. She dives with it, trusts it, trusts herself, and is ready for the freeing exhilaration she always feels. 

But it never comes. 

The thing that has always made her feel weightless can’t compete with the heaviness inside of her. 

She makes another pass, plummeting down and over the arena, over the empty stands. Over the discarded red and white popcorn bags, the forgotten programs, the sandwich wrappers. Over Zeke. 

When she swings by him, he looks like he might grab for her. 

But she’s too fast, too quick, too much, and Raven wonders if he realizes what a perfect metaphor this moment is. 

She doesn’t stop before the next pass, barely touches the platform before she’s pushing off of it again. If she lets herself rest, then she’ll have to deal with the tears she pushed back in the opera house, then again in her tent, and she can’t, she can’t, she—

She gives the rope too much slack and doesn’t realize it until she’s too late. She plows into Zeke, sending them both sprawling. She rolls over him, whipping the rope away from both of them to keep him from getting tangled. When they stop tumbling, she’s on top of him and his eyes are dazed. From the shock of getting hit, from her proximity, from all of it, she isn’t sure, but she knows she’s not strong enough for this. 

She grabs the rope she flung away from him, knowing the slack on the line will tighten, and when the counterweight falls, she’s ready for it. She pulls her legs up from around him, lifts, and she’s pulled upwards. 

She’s halfway to the ceiling before she realizes her hand is burning, tingling, from where she’s touched his cheek, made sure he was okay after the fall. 

Zeke struggles to his feet and he dives after the other end of the rope on the ground. A hard pull and another sandbag tumbles; Raven’s ascent is halted. She hisses at the jolt, twisting her body over to keep her balance, weaving herself around the rope. She can’t make it to the platform from where she is; a glance down at him confirms that he knows that. Raven grits her teeth, wraps the rope around her again, and lets go. 

The rope catches and unrolls her, spinning her to the ground. Everything is whirling and Raven tightens her core as the rope burns against the skin and braces herself for when she reaches the end of it. 

But Zeke catches her before she does. 

His arms are strong around her, pulling her out of the rope, setting her on the ground, steadying her as she wavers from the spinning. 

Again, their closeness hits her. 

“It’s impossible,” she whispers, an answer to the question he hasn’t even asked. 

“It’s not,” he says, and she hears the stubbornness on his voice; he reaches behind her for the rope.

“Fly with me,” he asks, and Raven’s eyes widen when he works his hand through the rope. 

“Zeke—” she protests, but he smiles for just a moment, and they both know exactly what he’s doing. He pulls her to him and she goes willingly, arms locking around his neck as he pulls on the rope and they’re soaring. 

They shoot up, straight up, and Raven’s head falls back. Zeke’s arm is wrapped around her waist and  _ this _ , this is what weightless feels like. Like a dream. She closes her eyes and she can feel him watching her. 

They’re postponing the inevitable, they both know it. 

“If you like flying,” she breathes, pulling her arms from around him, “try falling.”

And she drops herself, trusting him and her own hands and then her feet are on the ground and neither of them miss the sudden reversal, where she’s on the ground and he’s the one in the air. She pulls and he lowers; Raven anchors him to her with a hand on his neck. She reaches for the rope he’s holding, undoing a knot at the end of it and separating it into two, leaving one in his hand and pulling the other behind her. The lines are taut for a moment, the counterweights wavering, and she and Zeke are inches from each other. 

“Trust me?” she whispers, her fingers curling through the short hair at his neck, stalking a circle around him. 

“Of course,” he replies without thinking, turning to follow her, already leaning. 

“Jump,” she says on a smile, her arm dropping from his neck to his waist. 

And when they do, the ropes twirl. His arm settles on her waist, a mirror of hers, and they’re spinning around each other. When she brings up her legs, they spin faster, and the world blurs as it’s just the two of them. Hands on waists, fingers digging into rope, hair flying, breathless. 

She lets go of him. 

The ropes do their job and he lands on the ground; she’s whipped away from him, the rope sending her in an arc around him. He turns to watch her path, soaring through the sky, floating, their eyes locked on each other. 

Then it’s like something snaps inside of him, like he can’t just watch her fly, not without him, and as Raven continues to circle, Zeke runs towards the riggings. He hauls himself up the side of the arena, not bothering for the ropes to spot him. He climbs fast, and when Raven realizes where he’s heading, her heart leaps.

He’s coming to her. 

Over anything, over anyone, to her. 

He pulls himself onto the platform, and when she swings by, she reaches for him. 

He jumps. 

And they’re locked together, hands bound in rope and legs wrapped around each other, swinging through the arena.

Raven’s arms lower from the rope and she’s hanging around his neck, letting him carry her, support her. Catch her. 

The rope loosens. 

There’s less slack now and the circles are smaller, more like a pendulum. Zeke’s arms tighten around her as they get closer to the ground and when she looks up at him, her breath catches. Because she can read it in his eyes, his conviction that they can always be like this. Together, impossibly close. Made for each other, to find each other, to fly together. Just them, against the world, against anything, because they decide so.  

His feet catch first, and then he lowers her carefully, reverently. And when she touches the ground, she feels it like a jolt, like she’s been pulled from a dream. 

Back on the ground. 

Back to reality. 

The weightlessness evaporates, and in its place is heavy truth. They can be together like this, in here. Not anywhere else. This world is a mirage, an illusion, and the rest of the planet knows better. 

Raven’s throat is burning and she knows her eyes are filling, but this time it’s too much to hold back. 

“You know I want you,” she says slowly, echoing his first words in the arena. “It’s not like I’ve made a secret out of it or anything.”

She smiles, in spite of herself, because it was beautiful, the idea of him. Of them. She feels a tear spill over, and she untangles herself from his arms, stepping away, forcing her next words out. “But I can’t have you.”

“Raven—” Zeke begins, and his eyes are wide, desperate. 

“No,” she says thickly, knowing they can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep dancing, pretending, dreaming of stars. “We’d break.”

She lets go of the rope and it whistles through the air. She heads the thud of  a final sandbag landing, feels the heaviness and the weight of it, and understands it. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and tears her eyes away from him. She doesn’t run back to her tent, doesn’t fling herself on her cot, doesn’t let out the sobs that are clawing at her chest. She walks with her back straight, leaving him alone in the empty arena, her only comfort the fact that however badly she just hurt him, it’s nowhere close to how her own heart is breaking.


	2. Chapter 2

Someone is screaming her name. 

Raven blinks awake slowly, frowning at the unusually cloudy air floating around her tent. Cloudy from sawdust? From smog?

From smoke, she realizes absently. 

From smoke. 

She’s on her feet in a moment, her eyes burning with the acidity on the air, stumbling around her tent to find her shoes. She pulls a scarf from behind the door, covering her face as she pulls back the flap of her tent. 

The arena’s on fire. 

Flames licking up the sides of it, the proud banners destroyed and flags frayed in the hot air. It’s pandemonium all around her. She knows she needs to move, needs to get space between the blaze and herself, but her legs refuse to move. The circus, their circus. Everyone’s dreams and identity, the place that was home when they couldn’t find one elsewhere, up in flames. 

She hears a thundering of hooves and flattens herself, just in time, against the side of her tent; a horse races by. One of Luna’s stallions. The other is quick behind it and Raven looks around and sees that the whole menagerie is stampeding, fleeing. Luna must’ve released them. 

The smoke is awful. 

Awful to see, awful to smell, awful to feel. It’s grimy on her skin and scorches down her throat and Raven looks back at her tent before there’s a crash from the arena. She’s not sure if her eyes are wet from fear or regret or from the thick air, but she feel tears tracing down her cheeks and wipes angrily at them. Whirls from her tent, presses the scarf over her mouth again and runs. 

The square is glowing. 

Everyone’s faces reflect the orange light of the fire, their terror painted into caricatures by the harsh flames. She sees Kane in the front of the crowd, shock lining his features even as he directs the crowd. He’s running back and forth, yelling at people, and she can see him pushing back any emotions beyond the care of his people. 

She’s at the edge of the square, her back to the fire, and she hears a roar behind her, turns to see the fire from this angle, freezes. 

She would’ve never imagined fire to be so loud, but it’s a cacophony. 

Supports shuddering, papers snapping, flames building, water hissing. 

The presentation hall is groaning, shaking, the fire consuming it. Puffs of steam rise from every futile bucket of water dumped at the fire’s base and the heat is like a wall, pushing them farther and farther back. Raven can feel her heart pounding in her ears as she takes in the people responding to Kane. Their faces are smeared with ashes and sweat and fear, and Raven focuses on a pair of broad shoulders, covered tightly in white cotton. 

Two other men are on his arms, leaning against the weight of him, holding him back as he’s trying to run into the arena. 

“Wells,” she breathes in relief, her body remembering its autonomy and surging towards him. But the people in the square are screaming, pushing, running away from the fire and she’s fighting upstream and she can’t get to him. 

“Wells!” She yells his name as she fights through the crowd of people, shoulders crashing into her, gritting her teeth when someone hits her leg and angling her body through the mass. 

She doubts he can hear her, but he turns anyways. 

Their eyes lock, through the smoke,  and Raven watches as his shoulders sag, relief washing over him, and the men holding him back let him go. 

A moment later, he’s reached her, and he lifts her off her feet, clinging to her. 

“You’re okay?” he shouts into her hair, the question muffled by the din around him. 

She nods her affirmation against him, knowing he can feel her better than hear her, pulling back to check on him. “You?” He has soot all over his face and his shirt is drenched with sweat; he must’ve been near the fire. But he’s okay, he’s okay, and Raven tells her heart to be still. 

Abby screams.

Over the craziness, over the panic, Raven hears her yell, and turns in time to see a red-breasted jacket disappear into the flames. Abby’s face is disbelieving as Kane fades from view, but then a small hand tugs on Abby’s and she looks down. Little Madi. Abby turns her granddaughter into her, hiding her face against the soft fabric of her dress, while her eyes, dry and terrified, never leave the building. 

Raven looks around. 

Sees Miller and Jackson, Monty and Jasper and Harper. The Blake siblings, then Miller’s Dad. Indra and Gaia and Niylah and Emori, and then Murphy’s there too. Hands are on shoulders, waists, elbows, as the rest of the troupe comforts each other no matter how scared their faces show them to be. Their eyes are somber, reflecting the blaze like they’re staring at a pyre. 

She realizes that some of them are looking back at her, expressions sad, scared, and panic coils low in her stomach.

“Where is he?” she asks before she even registers what she's asking. Her voice is low, shaking, and she turns back to Wells, begging him to tell her that her gut is wrong, that everything is okay... 

But he drops his eyes, swallowing quickly. “Raven, you can’t—“ 

“Where is Zeke?” she asks again, and Wells’ face is too full of sympathy for her to imagine any other explanation. 

He’s in the fire. 

And she looks over at Abby, stricken, but steady for her granddaughter, unblinking as the smoke whirls around her. Staring at the last place they saw Kane disappear into. 

“Did Kane go after him?”

Wells nods, but there’s something he isn’t saying. 

The fire roars again, another billow of flames rising into the night sky, another shower of sparks, another crackling decimation of their dreams. 

“He’ll get him out, Rey.”

And sure, if anyone will it’s Marcus, but the fire is so hot, so bright and it’s hungry and Zeke shouldn’t have been in the arena in the first place…

He shouldn’t have been in the arena in the first place. 

He was helping Murphy with the swords, he was  _ supposed  _ to be helping Murphy with the swords. But Murphy practices in his tent on the other side of the square. 

Then she remembers when she first saw Wells in the middle of the square, with two men holding him back and his eyes flashing with determination. 

There’s only one thing that would drive her partner and her heart into a fire. 

Wells must see the realization wash over her, because his jaw locks and he mutters something that she doesn’t quite hear, but that sounds like an apology. 

He thinks she's in the fire.  

Raven feels the breath tear out of her lungs, mixing with ash and debris on the air. The roar of the fire had dimmed when Wells’ arms closed around her, safe, but now it’s swelled again, pounding, reverberating around her. And she feels every crack and groan that comes out of the inferno because it means the structure is weakening, compromised. It means Zeke is trapped. 

“No,” she whispers, turning to the blaze. 

“Raven,” Wells says soothingly, and she can feel his hand on her elbow, “There’s nothing—“ 

“NO!” She cries again, and this time it comes out on a yell and she’s straining against Wells’ grasp, and he has to lean back to counterbalance her weight. She feels his fingers tighten on her arm and then he’s holding her waist; the hands that propel her through the air and defy gravity now hold her immobile. 

They both stop when the arena suddenly falls silent. 

It concaves. 

Ash rains around them and the towers of the arena disappear, swallowed into the flames and the smoke. Abby’s eyes flutter shut and she sways on her feet, her hand tightening on Madi’s shoulder. Raven can’t look away. 

Wells is rubbing circles on her back, something soothing and something she usually appreciates, but it’s like she’s numb. The silence wears off around her and the roar rises and the building crashes, crumbles, but Raven can’t hear any of it. There’s a ringing in her ears, and she knows she should feel the heat of the fire but she’s cold, so cold. 

All around them, people are screaming, crying, terrified, but Abby and Raven are frozen, eyes glued to the fire, hoping blindly. 

Wells pulls her away from it, turns her into his chest. 

This can’t be happening, it’s not happening, the world can’t hate her so desperately that it would take him. Even if he wasn't even hers to take. She’s shaking against Wells, and she’s not sure if she’s crying or if she’s making a sound, but she knows that if Wells weren’t holding her then surely she’d be on the floor, crumpled like the arena.  

Someone shouts. 

Someone shouts and Raven doesn’t dare to hope, but she looks over and Abby’s hand is over her mouth, her eyes finally filling. Wells makes a sound like an exhale and a laugh and he meets her eyes again, to nod at her, and Raven turns around. 

Kane is staggering out of the fire, and in his arms is Zeke. 

Wells lets her go, but sticks closely beside her as she pushes through the crowd. Most people move for her, and she gets to the front as Marcus is calling for a stretcher. They roll Zeke onto it, and Raven stands still, uncertain, as they take him away. 

He’s alive. 

Wells tells her to go after him, and she does. 

They don’t take him to the nice hospital, just the closest one. Nurses in clean, starched, uniforms rush around him, and she’s not allowed in the room while anything happens, so she paces in the lobby. Picks at her nails, picks at the edge of the scarf, at her nails again. 

A nurse finally comes out, tells her in a voice as crisp as her apron that Raven can go in now. 

She feels like she should tiptoe. 

The hospital is as quiet as the fire was loud and Raven wonders for a moment if it’s okay for her to be there. It’s sterile and clean and she’s covered in soot, but then she reasons that it’s a hospital and they’ve cleaned worse than ashes off the sheets. So she sits on the edge of his bed. 

His face is raw, burned and scraped and still dirty, despite the nurse’s best efforts. His eyes, his kind eyes, the eyes she hasn’t been able to look away from since she saw him that first day with Kane, are still shut in unconsciousness. 

She hopes he’s having sweet dreams. 

Or sweet nothing. 

The nurses weren’t optimistic, but Raven doesn’t need their assurances. She needs him to wake up. 

There’s something caught in his hair, and without thinking, she reaches up to brush it out. Her finger linger over his hair. She traces down the side of his face, hand delicate on the skin that isn’t broken. Down to the collar of his shirt, over the thick fabric of his sleeves, down to his hands. And when she’s there, she can’t think of anything else to do but carefully work her fingers into his. 

His hands are wet, and she realizes she’s crying. 

Clears her throat, pushes it away, swallows it carefully. 

His forehead wrinkles, almost imperceptibly, and Raven’s breath catches. He’s not supposed to wake up for a while yet, if at all, and she wonders if maybe she should say something. 

_ Thanks for trying to save my life.    _

_ For running into a fire that you had no business being in.  _

_ For making me realize how much I care.  _

He doesn’t move again, and Raven wonders if maybe she’d imagined it.

But, just in case, she carefully lifts his cracked hand, pressing her cheek against the back of it. 

“I’m not saying,” she says, means for it to be soft, but her voice is raspy, “that I suddenly believe in stars.”

And she thinks of flying and falling with him, of leaping and trusting and of being free. How light her heart had felt, how warm, how safe. 

She turns her head against his hand, a gentle kiss on the tops of his bruised knuckles. “But I might just believe in you.”

It sounds as dumb aloud as it did in her head, but she has to say it. Just in case he hears it. 

“Wake up,” she whispers. 

Wake up, so she can look into his eyes again. So they can decide what’s impossible and what isn’t, so they can choose for themselves, not anyone else. 

“We’ll rewrite them, yeah?” she says, faltering, “It’s like you said. We found each other, and this isn’t how I lose you, okay? Please wake up.”

But Zeke is still and the hospital is still and Raven’s not sure if her heart will ever be still, so she whispers it again. 

“Wake up.”

It takes two days. 

Two days of Wells and Emori coming by and begging her to eat something or get some sleep. Of asking nurses if they’re certain there’s nothing they can do. Of refusing to let herself be cowed by his mother’s wrinkled nose or his father’s tight-lipped smile. 

It’s nothing sudden; he isn’t jolted awake and doesn’t sit straight upright. He doesn’t gasp for air or have a choking fit. But Raven feels a slight squeeze from the fingers she’s barely let go of, and she looks up and his eyes are open, and for the first time since the arena crumbled down, Raven can breathe. 

Zeke frowns when he sees her, like that can’t be right; she can’t be there. But the thing that wouldn’t be right is if she were anywhere else in the world, instead of here, with him. 

And she means to finally say thank you, or at least hello, but her words just seem like they wouldn’t be enough. Not when he’s looking at her like maybe he’s dreamed her, and his eyes tell her he’d do it again, and his fingers tighten around hers.    

She’s supposed to get the nurses, tell them that he’s awake and get them to get a doctor or someone to make sure that he’s okay. 

But he’s okay. 

She knows it, and he knows it, and Raven really should get a nurse but instead she kisses him.

Holds his face in her hands, moves her lips over his until she can’t smell the smoke that they haven’t been able to wash away, and the sterile hospital melts away around them. Her leg protests from the angle and their lips are still chapped from the fire, but she'll stay like this for hours if it means she can feel his heart beating under her, taste his smile on her mouth, hear him sigh in relief into her. She feels his hands as they settle on her arms, gentle and careful but needing her, pulling her into him. The words she couldn’t say on a trapeze or a ring, she breathes them into him and he sighs them back into her. And when she finally pulls back, just a fraction of an inch, she sees he’s wearing that same dazed expression as when she first flew through the arena and saw him. 

Zeke’s hand traces from her arm, up her neck, and his thumb is soft as it brushes over her cheek. His fingers weave into her hair, and he looks like he needs to be grounded to her, like this image of her is one he wants to have forever. 

Kind of like how she’s looking at him. 

**Author's Note:**

> soooo should i write a follow-up one? a zaven fire rescue, like in the movie? maybe? idk let me know if that's something y'all want


End file.
